ISRAEL’s Ministry of Finance has released Shekels 300m ($US 88.5m) to the Ministry of Transport and Road Safety to fund construction of the country’s first high-speed line for operation at up to 250km/h.
The project has an approved budget of Shekels 15bn to build 70km of new electrified infrastructure, running from Shefayim, north of Hertzliya near Tel Aviv, to Haifa Hof Ha-Carmel. The new line will cut the journey time between Tel Aviv and Haifa to 30 minutes.
Following the completion of property acquisition for the project by Israel Railways (IR), an official groundbreaking ceremony for the new line was held on December 24 2024. Construction is expected to take five years to complete, and will include building new stations as well as extensive alterations to existing stations on the IR network.
Line 431
Separately, the Ministry of Finance has also released Shekels 175m to fund the completion of work on the new electrified Line 431, running for 30km from Rishon Le-Zion Moshe Dayan station to Jerusalem Navon on the A1 Link via Rishon Le-Zion Harishonim, Anava and Modi'in.
Running in the median of Highway 431, the new line will avoid the need for passengers to change trains in Tel Aviv, cutting journey times by half. It is due to open in 2027, when the initial service will comprise two trains per hour in each direction, later rising to four trains per hour.
Two new stations are being built at Ramla South and Rishon Le-Zion Rhombus. IR awarded the Israeli Electra Infrastructures consortium a Shekels 400m contract to build the first section of the new line in September 2019, when the Line 431 project was expected to cost a total of Shekels 3.2bn.
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